


Kept One Back

by Merfilly



Category: Tombstone (1993)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brotherhood, Character Death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Gunfight at the OK Corral goes a shade different</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kept One Back

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for dark_fest on livejournal, but my muses refused to go graphic dark, and chose somber setting.
> 
> Also, prompt requested slash, but one thing I love about this pair is they could be that, or they could just be brothers-in-arms, and I tried to keep that feeling.

The gunshots had grown repetitious. Wyatt had never tried to count them. He knew fear. Two of his brothers and the man who'd been his friend through thick and thin were at risk.

The gunshots didn't want to stop, not even when his younger brother cried out. Wyatt backed toward him, firing, waiting for Ike to come back to the fight like the coward he was. Morgan was the baby here, and Wyatt had a duty to try and keep him safe.

Maybe the gunshots were ending? Wyatt was careful on his own next shot, attention focusing on each of the other players in this bad stage act. Virgil looked hurt but he was holding up. Morgan was down, though he managed to keep his gun up, and was tracking… what the hell?

His brain wanted his mouth to work, but he couldn't get the words out. Morgan was on target, and Doc had two guns, but Frank McLaury didn't look all that worried. Wyatt tried to pull his own weapon in line, his ears reporting a click across the suddenly too quiet corral, before two shots rang out. Morgan's gun was smoking, and then it was Doc sliding to his knees, like all the world had come to rest on his shoulders.

One more gunshot, and Wyatt knew it had come from his own gun, truer than Morgan's could be, and Frank McLaury fell away from Doc to join the dead in this battle of too many devils. The gun was separate from Wyatt's sense of self, as all his attention was taken by the too pale man that had been his truest friend since a dust up in Fort Griffin.

He didn't know just how he cleared the space between Morgan and Doc, didn't care, just threw himself down on his own knees and supported Doc in front of him since the stubborn man refused to fall over.

"Damnedest thing, Wyatt," Doc said softly, blood flecking at his lips. "Was certain I'd kept one bullet back in the left one."

"Let me lay you down, Doc," Wyatt said, feeling the wet warmth of blood soaking his shirt front where the bullet had exited. Maybe there was a chance of a clean wound that the gambler could yet recover from.

"You will, Wyatt. Soon enough." Doc's hand tried to come up to cover a cough, and Wyatt felt the blood stain growing on his own shirt.

"Don't talk like that, Doc. You've got too much fire to go down easy."

"Ever the optimist, Wyatt. No talking me around this time, though…" Doc's words petered out on a whisper. His head fell back toward Wyatt's shoulder, all weight held only by the stubborn man behind him.

"Doc… Doc, no…" Wyatt knew, and wanted to deny all knowledge of it. Doc's scathing words to him, before the fight, came back. Virgil's insistence on this fight, and Morgan's sheepish look of support for Virgil's choice haunted him. "No…"

"Wyatt…" It was Morgan calling him. Morgan was hurt, but alive.

Virgil could handle their baby brother. Wyatt shifted, laying Doc gently in the dust, closing the dead eyes that had always flared with the life his illness was claiming. He staggered up to his feet, ignoring the calls of both brothers, the words of that idiot Behan. He gathered Doc's pistols. Then he spotted the shotgun, and went to retrieve it. He heard Josephine calling his name from the portrait studio. None of those calls of his name mattered.

The devils had taken down a fallen angel Wyatt named friend. There was a reckoning to have, one Virgil would be no part of. The elder brother had cost Wyatt too much, while blaming him for all of it. Now it was time for Wyatt to stop twisting on fate and become the whirlwind instead.

Doc deserved that much.

`~`~`~`~`

It was nearly three weeks before anyone lived to say they'd seen Wyatt Earp after that day in the O.K. Corral. One of the posses sent by Marshal Dake had been trailing a surviving band of Cowboys. While two of those lay in the dust, limbs askew from being shot off their horses, Wyatt Earp was found face down and strangely composed. It was Virgil, having hoped to stop his brother peacefully, who noted it was just as if Wyatt had slipped to his knees like Doc had.

Only no one had been there to hold up Wyatt.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Ebontress/MaoYenDKC


End file.
